6.2 Inclusive education at the school gate
6.2.3 Interpreting and enacting inclusive education
The two NGOs have differing definitions, interpretations, and interventions to enact inclusive education. The Inclusive Schools NGO conceptualizes inclusive education in ways that cater to their clientele of low-fee private schools,
what is must have for our schools is survival of schools…for the school to survive they want to retain students, they need admissions, they need kids to have normal basic
mathematics basic proficiency okay? If the school has not attained that the school will not be in a place to think what inclusion in terms of disability or other aspect would be
because that’s a good to have for them. (Kartik, Inclusive Schools)
The NGO perceives itself to be working in school settings that, unlike elite private schools, are
“trapped in the basics.” The NGO’s explicitly stated mission is to “support children with diverse learning abilities, children with symptoms of learning disabilities and “close those early gaps in mainstream education with the help of the main stakeholders in the school, which are the teachers and the school leaders.” However, working with the priorities of the school, disability inclusion is not central to the NGOs work. According to the NGO, the school's greatest concern is its financial viability and survival,
in this segment, if children with disabilities come and don't come like that's not going to bother the school, but if a normal, if a regular child with whatever capabilities or abilities, is not able to progress in the class somehow, that's going to drive out their admission.
(Kartik, Inclusive Schools)
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At the same time, the NGO does not view the reluctance of low-cost private schools to enroll disabled children as a consequence of prejudice or discrimination. That is, “mainstream schools”
deny admission to children with disabilities not because of a “mindset gap” but because of an
“ability gap,”
We often put it it is just the mindset that people don’t want to do it. But I think I’ve had a lot of principals telling me that you want to support children with disabilities in my school but right now I don’t even admit. Next, you want to support children with high learning gaps we don’t have resources for them. My teachers are not capable. If someone comes for admission if there is a child with high high learning gap I cannot admit not because I don’t want to admit but because I know that my teachers will run away if I do that, so it’s the ability gap inside the system that stops them. And that’s where we want to fit in. (Kartik, Inclusive Schools)
According to the founder, schools do not admit children with disabilities because they lack the resources and competence to address their needs. The NGO defines an “inclusive learning environment” as one where “children irrespective of their abilities are being catered at their level for their need in the system.” The work of the organization is to then work with the school to introduce and improve “facilities”, “capacity”, “resources”, or “awareness” to “ensure that all children with all different abilities are being respected and catered in the system.” When asked how the organization convinces schools to employ their services when the school does not admit children with disabilities nor does it acknowledge their presence, the founder describes what he calls the “game of vocabulary.” He recounts how the NGO changed strategies,
So very early on in 2016 when we used to talk about learning disability awareness, we can conduct sessions around learning disabilities and principals used to straightaway
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deny like but when we started talking about the symptoms when we changed the dialogue that we won’t talk about learning disabilities we’ll talk about symptoms. Instead of the label of disabilities, let’s break it down to what the symptoms are, what kids face. Then the principals and teachers said yes, because that was their vocabulary, the stakeholder’s vocabulary. So that was our first learning that instead of talking jargon let’s start with the vocabulary of the stakeholder. (Kartik, Inclusive Schools)
The “game of vocabulary” is to avoid using terms associated with disability and focus, instead, on the priorities of the school. As one teacher stated, the goal of the NGO is “to bring the school to a point that our kids don’t fall behind.” The presence of the NGO in the school is to ensure the learning of all children and improve the school’s reputation in the low-fee private school market.
Through in-service professional development, the NGOs intervention seeks to make teachers
“capable” of meeting the “need” of children in the school by closing the “gaps” between high- achieving children and children who are not learning because of their “symptoms.” Farheen, who teaches second grade, describes the goals of the NGO as,
The main goal of the NGO is that every child should know at least know that much that they can be with everyone in the class and stay I mean no child feels low…everyone child should know so much that they can keep up with everyone, doesn’t feel low in themselves. There are different teaching techniques in that…later they told us to make rigor-wise groups so with all these things there was a lot of improvement in the children we saw that what students didn’t know what to do those all those things students rigor has become a bit high. The high-rigor students have become very much high and the low- rigor students at least they are reading…(Khadija, Ahmedabad)
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Inclusive education in this case is about ensuring that all children achieve grade-appropriate learning such that no child is out of age, out of pace, or out of sync, about achieving sameness and uniformity in learning (Gillies, 2008; Graham & Slee, 2008). The teacher explains how the NGO provided them with “different teaching techniques” and supported the formation of “rigor- wise groups” or ability grouping. The interpretation of inclusive education as uniformity and sameness not only meets the needs of the school to ensure their “survival” by retaining enrolled students but is also embedded within the Indian education policies and frameworks the NGO seeks to implement. Notions of learning outcomes and quality education understand ability diversity as a “threat to standardised performance indicators” (Liasidou & Symeou, 2018, p. 8).
This approach to inclusive education is described by the NGOs as academic inclusion, which exists in contrast with social or emotional inclusion. Inclusive Schools NGO, aiming to address the needs of their paying clientele, focuses on academic inclusion, arguing that “for mainstream schools, academic inclusion comes first. Social, emotional inclusion is all secondary” (Kartik, Inclusive Schools). According to the NGO founder, low-fee private schools prioritize academic inclusion. Social and emotional inclusion is considered a luxury afforded to elite institutions, whose clientele has the resources for their children to access medical professionals and other services to support the education of disabled children (Kalyanpur, 2008).
Unlike the Inclusive Schools NGO, the Hope Fellowship aims to prioritize social and emotional inclusion. The program coordinator of the Hope Fellowship uses terms like
‘belonging’ and ‘acceptance’ to emphasize the social and emotional aspects of inclusion, so I think here the core of what the fellows at least when we are leaving the school in 2 years maybe one of the hopes is that they see that every child in that school has felt a sense of belonging. (Sana, Hope Fellowship)
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The Hope Fellowship emphasizes social and emotional learning (SEL) in its intervention by partnering with organizations and individuals who work on SEL and mental health in educational settings. Inclusive education is defined in spatial terms: emphasizing the presence of all children in the same classroom celebrated for their strengths,
(Inclusion is about) All children. I think, I think that is one word I want to frame it like
‘All means All’. A lot of people talk about all children, you know, it's, it's a failure on us educators that we haven't reached all. So, for inclusive education they are studying together, no one is doing anyone charity or favors, everyone is helping each other, and recognizing everybody's strength, celebrating that strength. That's inclusion for me or inclusive education. (Sana, Hope Fellowship)
The phrase ‘All means All’ comes from the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report (UNESCO, 2020) titled ‘Inclusion and Education: All Means All.’ A few weeks prior to the interview with the program coordinator, this term and the report were discussed in an organization-wide meeting on the need for inclusive education. Yet, much like the Inclusive Schools NGO, the Hope staff recognizes that schools prioritize academic achievement,
Main is academic inclusion, that's, that's the one question that's burning in my head right now. And maybe I have, maybe there's already something available. See, I've not done myself, any studies, deeper in inclusive education. What was coming more from what I want to create, which is belongingness for all children, but then it's very interconnected when you're talking about the school we cannot not talk about academic inclusion (Sana, Hope Fellowship)
The program coordinator recognizes that the orientation to inclusive education is “coming more from what I want to create which is belongingness.” At the same time, there is an understanding
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that school settings require “talk about academic inclusion.” Yet, unlike Inclusive Schools NGO, Hope Fellowship does not charge schools for their services and is perhaps decoupled from the pressures of the schools.
Another important distinction between the two NGOs is in their models of implementing inclusive education: does inclusion occur through shifts in capacity or changes in mindset?
Unlike Inclusive Schools NGO, which focuses on the “ability gap”, the Hope Fellowship
emphasizes shifts in mindset, culture, and school policy as the means to create inclusive schools.
Instead of playing the “game of vocabulary” to sidestep conversations about disability and inclusion, the Hope Fellowship is designed such that fellows initiate conversations about such topics in schools to create awareness and challenge existing beliefs,
And then we are hoping to have equip teachers and, again, students and parents, teachers, specifically with um training on how to include a diversity of learners in their classrooms trainings on changing mindsets, thinking about inclusion for both parents, students and teachers, thinking about, and actually reflecting on. So a lot of it is creating this space for reflection. (Diya, Hope Fellowship)
In changing beliefs about inclusion and disability, the fellows become the site of knowledge about these topics,
The fellow told me…I didn’t know it at the time but no, such children can ask I mean the kind of disabled kids can also study in normal schools. Because what I knew that they are separate, special schools for them. But the fellow was like no it’s not necessary. It
depends on the wishes of the parent if they want to keep the child in normal or send them to a proper special school. I was like, okay, fine. I didn’t even know about this. (Sadiya, Mumbai)
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As Sadiya explains, the fellow provided the teacher with knowledge about educational options for children with disabilities. Before the fellowship, the teacher believed that disabled children require special schools. Through conversations with the fellows, the teacher learned that school choice for disabled children “depends on the wishes of the parent.” This perspective aligns with existing policy frameworks on the education of children with disabilities in India. Fellow conversations about inclusive education with teachers are carried out in staffrooms and through monthly meetings,
Interviewer: Have you heard of the term inclusive education?
Yes, from the NGO staff…the fellows…they explained a bit about inclusive education.
They explained that inclusion is something where you take everyone’s views and everyone’s points in our daily lives…to understand everything, to listen to everyone, to respect everyone. And then finding a decision that everyone agrees with (Yasmin, Mumbai)
Yasmin comes to understand inclusive education, “explained” by the fellows. To her, inclusive education is about consensus building and mutual respect. Language around inclusion and disability is central to the Hope Fellowship. The work of the fellows is described as creating
“very very reflective spaces, and a lot of dialogue and conversations” that are “safe spaces to talk about inclusion to even breaking it down to like the basics” (Diya, Hope Fellowship). Within the organization, there is a lot of discussion about respectful language for disability and inclusion,
I was thinking, how do you even define disability? Like you know like so this is a
question, I don't know if I answered your question, but I'm questioning myself. And that's why I ask always we have to say neurodiversity, or say disability or not, because I know there are challenges for them we cannot not acknowledge in the discourses that we have
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currently of ability and ableism. So I'm still exploring what to say about that. (Sana, Hope Fellowship)
Questions of language translate into how teachers describe disability,
I won’t call them abnormal, I won’t call them…what do you say apahij (handicapped), I won’t call them that. Because all kids are there, all kids are equal. Yes, it’s just that some kids are different from the other kids. So that thing they observe and then which kid is an expert in what. You know what they say right everyone is an expert in something or the other. So I won’t say that if the child doesn’t know maths they are weak. It could be that they are good at English or good at drawing. This thing also the NGO people put in our minds. That in every child, each child is different from the other. (Zahra, Mumbai) Zahra recognizes that the “NGO people put in our minds” that disabled children are not
“abnormal” or “handicapped” or “weak” but all “all children are equal” but “some kids are different.”